Don’t keep it all bottled up

A few weeks ago, the results of a College-wide mental health survey was released on Felix.

At first glance, the numbers looked scary where 75% out of 1115 respondents said that they’d experienced unhealthy amounts of stress and mental health symptoms sometime during their time in Imperial.

It is more comforting to see the figures concerning help they have sought out.

To give a recap on some numbers, more than half of sufferers said that they confided in friends, 20% said they saw a GP and 13% said that they approached their personal tutor for help regarding this.

Unfortunately, 28% said that they didn’t disclose their stress or condition with anyone.

In addition to this, 16% suspected that they have a mental illness but are yet to be diagnosed, which is only slightly different to the percentage of those who have already been medically diagnosed (20%).

Combined with the number of respondents who spoke to no one about their stress, this suggests that there is a lonely group who did not receive any help for their conditions.

I think there are a number of possible reasons for this: Help might not be visible enough, which is something currently being addressed by Mentality.

Some people might prefer to deal with the stress and their condition on their own.

Or finally, seeking help of any kind is a terrifying prospect, whether because of the stigma surrounding mental illnesses or fear of dramatising themselves.

The last reason is the topic I want to talk about this week.

It’s a scary feeling when you want help but are stopped by real or imagined pressure, because it’s not a visible problem that can be easily resolved.

It’s a kind of isolation and loneliness that can’t be explained to others because it seems to go against every instinct to talk about it. An example will show you what I mean.

Say, you’re suffering from a case of depression but you don’t know about it. Every once in a while, you will enter an episode that makes everything seem pointless and unachievable for days on end, even if this is something as simple as getting out of bed. You suspect it might be depression, but you quickly shoot down the thought, dismissing it as the blues everyone talks about.

So of course you wouldn’t talk to anyone about it since it’s nothing, right?

But the suffering is real. Weeks and weeks go by and these terrible phases come back.

You still think it’s the blues and you’re more sensitive than everyone else because you can’t get out of it like everyone else can.

By blaming yourself for being overly dramatic, you bottle it up even more, putting up a wall so no one would judge you.

Even if you know your friends would be sympathetic, you don’t want to risk the misunderstanding.

If your social circle has a stigma for mental illness, confiding to them is like coming out to a group of homophobic friends.

One difference in the analogy however. While homosexuality is a usually concrete where you feel attracted to guys or girls, mental illness has a lot of overlap with everyday emotions and it’s sometimes hard to draw the line between them.

Coming back to my original point, experiencing a mental illness can be a confusing and isolating experience which makes seeking help harder than it seems.

Because of stigma and fear of misunderstanding, there is a vast gap between self-diagnosis and going to the health centre for an actual one, or seeking any help at all.

To bridge this gap, there are the call centres on the side of this page.

Some of these numbers, such as the Samaritans, are operated by trained supporters who can give advice or just listen, depending on what the caller prefers.

The best thing about these services is the anonymity. That way, sufferers won’t have to be afraid of judgments or consequences after confiding in someone else.

After calling them, the sufferer would hopefully know more about what they’re going through, without having to confront the wall they set up for themselves because they’re talking to trained strangers.

Then with that information, it is much easier to decide whether they still want to seek out help as they now have a second opinion, which is invaluable when you already have a whirlwind of doubts and unconfirmed fears in your head.

Regardless of your choice, contacting call centres would be a helpful and harmless first step to however you choose to deal with the stress you experience.